Making The Northern Territory Australia’s Seventh State Is Kind Of A Terrible Idea
Making the NT a state sounds fun, but plenty of people aren't keen on the idea - for good reason.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the nation’s Premiers and Chief Ministers gathered in Sydney yesterday for a “leaders’ retreat,” which ostensibly involved very serious discussions about terrorism and tax reform but sounds more like that wholesome end-of-school-camp activity where everyone writes their feelings on a piece of paper and puts it in a hat for someone else to read out.
One of the biggest items to come out of the retreat was the news that the Northern Territory could well become Australia’s seventh state by July 2018; NT Chief Minister Adam Giles proposed the idea and it was backed by every state leader, as well as the Prime Minister.
It’s a fun thought, especially if the powers-that-be accept the clear will of Herald readers and choose ‘Deathstar’ as the new state’s name. If the plan goes ahead it’ll be the first time since Federation in 1901 that Australia’s gotten a new state; there have been some serious pushes to make new states before, like the New England New State campaign in the 1960s, but they’ve always either fallen through or been defeated when it came to an election.
But the proposal has also raised some thorny questions. For one, the NT has a population of just 245,000, less than half the size of Tasmania. If it becomes a state the Territory will be entitled to twelve Senators, up from the two it currently has, giving the NT a massive representation in Parliament relative to its size.
The Senate’s designed to give smaller states a larger say, but statehood could mean a Territory person’s vote is worth around 30 times the vote of someone in NSW or Victoria, which isn’t exactly fair to them. Nor is it great news for people in the ACT, which has a much larger population than the NT does but would be left out in the cold representation-wise.
@renailemay because you are a place that exists purely for government and you should be thankful that you are not put in the sea.
— Chris Duckett (@dobes) July 23, 2015
But while a new state could have unintended consequences for Southerners (ie. everyone not from the Territory), it could mean a great deal of upheaval for the people this change will affect the most, because the idea of statehood is one a lot of Territory locals aren’t exactly crazy about. In 1998 then-Chief Minister Shane Stone (true fact: it’s in the Constitution that Darwin must always be run by someone called ‘Shane’) called a referendum asking Territorians if they wanted to live in a state rather than a territory, and it was narrowly voted down due to opposition from the Territory Labor Party and indigenous groups.
The issue has sporadically popped up ever since, though never with much enthusiasm. Back in 2007 a member of the Territory’s Statehood Steering Committee admitted that “people are not interested in statehood right now,” and in 2011 statehood advocacy group Towards State 7 held 50 forums across the territory to try and gee up some enthusiasm for the idea. A grand total of 840 people showed up. Even Chief Minister Giles has admitted it’s not at the top of anyone’s priority list.
A lack of interest in a debate like this isn’t necessarily a reason not to have one, as any sad-eyed true believer in an Australian republic will happily tell you. But many Territorians are wary of giving more power to the government apparatus in Darwin for good reason.
The Northern Territory was granted self-governing status by the Commonwealth in 1978, and since then successive NT administrations have been plagued by accusations of mismanagement and cronyism; even this week, problems around corruption and a lack of transparency have seen politicians quit and ministerial staffers face criminal charges. Award-winning journalist Nicolas Rothwell regards the Territory’s governing structures as so dysfunctional — citing its “neglected infrastructure, its mendicant economy, its increasingly transient society, the failure of its governance systems, its degraded parliament” — that self-government should be rescinded altogether.
In particular, there are pretty serious questions about what statehood might mean for the 30 percent of Territorians who are Indigenous. Many Territory Aboriginal groups campaigned against statehood in 1998, partly over fears a fully-fledged state government would be able to push back against the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which gives traditional owners a legal basis to claim title over lands in the NT.
Aboriginal representative groups like the Central Land Council regard the Land Rights Act as immensely important; more than half the Territory’s land is held by traditional landowners under native rights titles, and groups like the CLC are wary of any future state government using their increased authority to undermine the legal stability those landowners enjoy under the Act.
What’s more, Territory governments of both political persuasions have earned a reputation for blowing Federal money meant for Indigenous communities on expensive, unnecessary building projects to win white votes in Darwin. Both major NT land councils, the CLC and the Northern Land Council, have said the Territory government “cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money” and called the Territory “a failed state that is almost totally dependent on the Commonwealth.”
Not that Commonwealth does a great job managing the Northern Territory at the moment; federal schemes like the Emergency Intervention and the Basics Card income management program are strongly opposed by many Indigenous groups in the NT. But giving more power to a Darwin political system with such major problems of governance and community confidence is probably not going to be the fun new-state birthday party everyone would like it to be.
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Feature image via ABC/Twitter.